Re: New Front Desk members
On Tue, 2005-02-01 at 20:12 +0200, Richard Braakman wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 03:41:51PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:04:36 -0700, Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org> said:
> >
> > > *) English common usage (rather than formal usage) is rapidly and
> > > widely adopting "singular they" (much like a lot of the country uses
> > > "y'all", or "you all" for those who don't want to sound Southern,
> > > for a second person plural). This may be offensive to purists, but
> > > frankly, purists shouldn't be speaking English in the first
> > > place. It's a terrible language for purity. :)
> >
> > A nit: y'all is singular. "all y'all" is plural. Notherners
> > often get this wrong.
>
> Hmm. In my experience in Houston, the singular was y'all and the
> plural was y'alls. Could this be region-specific? Or perhaps
> a city / country distinction?
I live in Houston, and sometimes y'all is singular (plural, all y'all;
possessive, y'all's) and sometimes y'all is plural. Usually it's the
former, but I've never heard of y'alls being plural.
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